How leading retailers are using AI to transform the shopping experience

Walmart introduced its AI shopping assistant Sparky to the world in June. Shoppers can use chatbots in the Walmart app to search for products, read reviews, and receive personalized purchasing recommendations.

The retail giant has rolled out additional features to its app for the holiday season, including party planning support, a 3D showroom, and audio product descriptions and reviews.

Walmart announced in October that it and sister company Sam’s Club would partner with OpenAI. The deal should allow customers to shop through ChatGPT using the platform’s instant checkout feature.

Target and OpenAI announced in November that custom Target apps are coming to ChatGPT, with a beta version available later that month. The companies said the feature allows shoppers to purchase multiple items in one transaction, buy fresh produce, and choose their preferred shipping method.

“Our goal is simple: to make every interaction as natural, helpful, and inspiring as chatting with a friend,” Prat Vemana, Target’s executive vice president and chief information product officer, said in a statement when the partnership with OpenAI was announced.

Target’s app also features unique AI-powered tools, including one that can scan user-written grocery lists and automatically add items to carts. The retail giant has unveiled a holiday-themed AI shopping assistant that suggests gift ideas based on user prompts.

Amazon’s AI-powered shopping assistant “Rufus” is growing. Rufus has more than 250 million customers this year, with monthly user numbers up 140% from a year ago, CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in October.

AI shopping assistants will be available starting in 2024 to provide consumers with personalized product recommendations. Rufus typically appears next to search results as a panel where users can choose from shopping-related prompts or ask their own questions to find deals on the platform.

“Our goal is to save our customers time and money by making online shopping even simpler with real-time information and expert insights,” Rajiv Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of search and conversational shopping, said in November. press release.

online marketplace In May, eBay announced an AI-powered shopping agent that personalizes the shopping experience. The company says shopping agents will always appear throughout a customer’s shopping journey, either by responding to requests or through inline messages on the pages the user is visiting.

“Our AI shopping agent gave shoppers a new way to shop across our inventory, providing personalized product selection and expert guidance based on their personal shopping preferences,” CEO Jamie Iannone said on an October earnings call.

He said the company builds and fine-tunes large-scale language models in-house to perform specific shopping agent tasks. “We plan to gradually embed agent functionality into the core of eBay’s business through our core search experience over the next several quarters,” Iannone said.

Home Depot created an AI tool called Blueprint Takeoffs for professional builders, remodelers, and renovators, who are the core of the retailer’s customer base.

The tool is named after takeoffs, which are material lists and estimates that workers could take time to create themselves.

Home Depot said the tool can handle single-family project tasks that would otherwise take weeks within days.

“The speed and accuracy of Blueprint Takeoffs tools gives professionals more time to focus on what matters most: serving customers and growing their businesses,” said Mike Rowe, executive vice president of professional business at Home Depot, when Blueprint Takeoffs was announced in November.

Lowe’s introduced Mylow, an AI-powered virtual home improvement assistant created in collaboration with OpenAI, in March. The retailer said it will make the expertise of Lowe’s employees readily available to customers.

This assistant is designed to provide step-by-step instructions for DIY projects, provide design inspiration, and help you find specific products at Lowe’s.

“Our virtual assistants Mylow and Mylow Companion, built on the OpenAI platform, answer nearly 1 million questions every month about everything from product specifications to project know-how to customer order status,” CEO Marvin Ellison told analysts in November.

Abercrombie & Fitch is in the midst of a turnaround, and the company said on its November earnings call that it was investing in AI to enhance the customer journey.

For example, the company recently started using AI agents for customer service.

The company also launched a partnership with PayPal in November that will allow customers to browse retailer catalogs and complete transactions within AI conversations on AI response engines like Perplexity. Abercrombie & Fitch is one of several retailers that will be integrated into the ecosystem.